I noticed this morning in reading my favorite blogs that Coach Brown posted about my post responding to a Sacramento Bee opinion piece. I think the Coach took exception to two paragraphs in the post which he quoted. I think those two paragraphs were a pretty small part of the thirteen paragraph post, but I'll respond to the Coach's concerns.

Take for instance Friends of Dave (blogroll), who is a fellow Ukiah blogger who made the common reference to "other jobs have less than favorable conditions so teachers should stop bitching" argument.

I think all too often in public education, we continue the same strategies year after year and we blame student apathy, parent apathy, too little funding or high-stakes testing for our failed teaching practices and educational strategies. If the goal of public education is to educate students, we can't stop trying simply because students or parents aren't making it easy. As I've said before, fireman don't ignore fires that are started by dumb decisions made by a homeowner. Police don't ignore calls from people who have made bad choices. Doctors don't stop treating fat people because they made bad diet and exercise choices.

First of all, California constantly makes the mistake of CHANGING teaching strategies that have worked in the past to satisfy.......well, someone who was bored I guess. You could hate "drill and kill" to death, but the memorization of multiplication tables sure worked a hell of a lot better than that "whole math" crap.

Now for the "fireman, policeman, doctor" remark, which is often used when non-classroom related people decide to pop off about what's right for education. Last I remember, firemen, doctors, and police are all given the tools of the game to make learning work. No, I'm not talking about gimmicky learning programs or "one laptop per child" tools, I'm talking about schools that are palaces and not dirty, in disrepair, or straight out crumbling. I also don't remember doctors being told, "you don't get O2 today", cops being told, "you don't get bullets today", or firemen being told, "sorry, your allotment of water was used up this week". In many cases, a teacher is ill-equipped for the job, ill-supported for the job, and then told to preform. Donald Rumsfeld was basically fired for saying, "You go to war with the Army that you have, not the Army you want", but teachers are told that every day.

And by the way, firemen are never blamed for starting the fire, policemen are never blamed for committing the crime, and doctors aren't blamed for people getting fat. Teachers are most certainly a target of blame for the lack of education of children, even though they have no control over a multitude of variables. Teachers still teach, firefighters fight fires, police control crime, and doctors treat patients, but only one of those is actually held accountable at the end of the day to entities that they have no control over; the other factors of a student's life. Firefighters aren't held accountable for the meth lab fire, they put it out. Police aren't held accountable for the domestic violence, they arrest the suspect. Doctors aren't held accountable for patients getting diabetes, they simply try and treat the condition. Yet teachers are somehow given lessor tools, more government oversight, less pay, and are supposed to be held to a greater accountability over things they have no control over?

I think that the Coach and I agree on a lot of things. There are several of his points in this post that I agree with. For example, his comment about California's public education being torn to and fro from various strategies such as whole language vs. phonics or new math vs. traditional math. I agree with the Coach that these changes aren't necessarily helpful. In fact, I'd go further to say that I don't believe our textbook adoptions are helpful either. By overly prescribing what textbooks and materials that districts can use, we've created a huge bureaucracy and industry that leads us to inferior, politically correct instructional materials.

Then the Coach takes on my comparisons to the fireman, policeman and doctors. His point is that those professions get the tools they need to do their work. I bet if you asked those professionals, they'd all have complaints about resources and tools. I think anyone, particularly those working in government-funded organizations, have had complaints about how resources in their organizations were allocated.

Many public school districts are terrible at getting resources to the classroom. There are a variety of reasons for this including bureaucratic inertia, union contracts, administrator indifference and legislative mandate.

The Coach's next point was that these other professions aren't blamed for the crime, fire or sickness while teachers are blamed for low academic performance. I'm not among the people who place the sole blame on teachers for student academic performance. The key point of my post in the first place was that teachers shouldn't claim immunity from having an impact on student achievement.

Teacher unions often stress the importance of students having experienced teachers who have advanced degrees, credentials and lots of ongoing professional development. If that is so important, then teachers must have an impact on student achievement. If not, what would it matter whether they had these credentials? Given that impact, I don't believe it is reasonable for teachers like the one who wrote the original opinion piece to claim that they only "encourage students". Those experienced, professional, well-qualified teachers are taught skills and strategies which they use to teach students. They can't have it both ways. Either their instructional strategies make a difference and they have to assume some responsibility for student achievement or it doesn't.

The duty of public education is to educate. If our instructional strategies aren't working for large groups of our students, but other schools are having better success with the same students, we need to stop whining and making excuses and start looking to those successful schools for the answer. Schools aren't relieved of the responsibility to educating students simply because they're making it hard. Cowboy up and get to work.

Simply put, not nearly as easy to implement. I'm sure that the income of "successful schools" has plenty to do with it. Anyone that doesn't think that schools with money are more successful are in dreamland. Then add it Second Language Learners, increased Special Education populations, lack of money, sue-happy parents, towns with increased drug culture, lack of money, equipment from the 1990's, shoddy infrastructure, a district wide lack of vision or business sense, oh yea, and lack of funding. You say that California spends over half its budget on Education? Ok, when it walks into my classroom let me know. While your at it, let me know when you find a successful school that manages to operate through all these problems. I'll be glad to jump on board.

In the meantime, until you make every effort to supply teachers with the tools needed to succeed, stop blaming them.

Oh yeah, while I'm making this blog post, I'm doing the following:

• updating my Moodle for the classes
• instant messaging with a student about an assigned book; Persepolis
• communicating with another student on Facebook about attending U.C. Irvine

I also graded essays this evening. Doctors, firemen, nor policemen take that kind of work home with them.

Yee hah.

First, the Coach suggests that these successful schools have more money than the not-so-successful schools. Unfortunately, the Coach went back to the money argument. If only schools had enough money, then all kids would excel. We all know that the experiences of students in Washington DC and other places show that isn't necessarily the case.

Just for fun, I looked at the 126 schools that the California Business for Education Excellence Foundation and Just for the Kids - California selected as 2007 Star Schools. These are schools that are closing achievement gaps and improving the academic achievement of all students. Of those 126 schools, 94 spend less per student than the average in the our local school district. These are not schools that are wealthy. They're just doing more with the resources that they're getting. They're doing something different, that works.

The paragraph that Coach Brown didn't quote is this one:

The problem with Dave's scenario is that while all schools are on the level playing field of standardized testing, some schools do much better at getting their poor and minority students to proficiency. Their students didn't just wake up one morning and decide to care. Their teachers and their schools are doing something that is making a difference. Those successful strategies are the key. Dave and his colleagues need to find out about those strategies and see what they can implement in their own classrooms to make a difference.

I agree with Coach Brown that teachers don't have all the resources they need. Most teachers are hardworking professionals who love to teach and love their students. My point was that teachers have to accept some of the responsibility for student achievement and that if what they are doing isn't working and that other schools are doing much better, they need to find out why those other schools are successful with poor and minority students. The time that we spend complaining about resources or blaming others doesn't make public education any better. At some point, you "fight with the Army you have" and make it work. Why wouldn't a good teacher, principal or superintendent want to learn from educators that are making a difference?